Page 82 of Watching You

She shrugged and took a bite of the pear, wiping juice from her chin, chewing and swallowing before answering.

‘I honestly don’t know. Sometimes this feels like a marriage, Brodie. Not that I’ve been married but for me our relationship is how I imagine all the good bits of a long-term relationship. I can trust you. I never get sick of you. And you get me, right? Like, no one has ever really gotten me before? There’s this … continuity with you. You’re my anchor.’

‘An anchor is designed to weigh you down. It feels to me as if you’re not making other connections in your life because of us, except that we’re not married. You should want your own life, a private life, a partner.’

‘I have you,’ she said.

‘Connie, for the brightest person I’ve ever met – the brightest person anyone I’ve met has ever met, in fact – you are startlingly dumb.’

She threw the core of the pear into a compost pile and wiped her fingers on her jeans.

‘I kissed you because you smelled good,’ she said. ‘It’s that Mont Blanc aftershave. The dark and the late night, and you really engaging with me, I just couldn’t stop myself.’

‘That’s not what this is though, this thing with us. It would destroy everything.’

‘Me losing you would destroy everything,’ she said. ‘Don’t leave me, Brodie. Not even for a few months. I do what I do well because when I turn around, you’re there. I never have to be distracted by anything because you’re next to me, and I don’t mean travel arrangements or security or driving – I can pay someone to do any of that. It’s my head and my heart that need you. When you’re not there for a week, it’s like I can’t think straight. We’re a machine that only works when you fit both parts together.’

‘I’m not a machine, Connie,’ he said.

‘Believe it or not, neither am I. I can break, and I can run slow, and parts of me can get worn out.’

She sat down next to him in a garden chair. ‘Come to Martha’s Vineyard with me for a few days and decide then. No work talk. And I won’t try to pressure you. Will you at least do that?’

Brodie Baarda looked at her face in the light of the blossom pink late afternoon sun, and knew he would never be able to say no to Connie Woolwine.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Martha’s Vineyard. Beyond that, we’ll just have to wait and see.’